SAHM's place in a household
Find a Conversation
| Sun, 05-30-2004 - 4:17pm |
They don't know me well enough and I just listened but I only do 60% of the housework and almost no cooking. My dh does almost all the shopping and takes the preschooler and baby and he likes to cook. He also works a job and earns a 6 figure salary occasionally doing overtime. He does all lawn and garbarge stuff. He also bathes both the kids. I do everything else plus the bills and if we have problems with anyone about anything my dh likes me to handle it since I can pit-bull anyone and calling the attorney general or the BBB is something I am familar with. I only mention it because these women did say their dh's were the ones to take care of business conflicts and the bills.
This got me thinking what do people consider a sahm role in the house to be? Obviously these women think in order to stay home and do your share, perhaps to make up for not bringing home a pay check, you do almost everything and if you don't you are obviously lazy. I have always thought of sahm as being more for the kids and me. My main concern is doing things with my kids as a family and showing them a good/educational time with their environment. It's really not to make my dh's life easier nor mine but if it happens anyway great. My dh married me for the person I am, not for what I could do to make his life easier. He would never think of degrading me nor threatening me over houswork which is one thing that alot of women in my playgroup said their dh's did.
So what is a sahm role or job duties in your personal opinion? Do you feel a person staying home should have to do more in order for it to be "fair" to the person working?

Pages
BTW, I actually agree with the previous study that had parents doing about an hour a day. I think they were really stretching to come up with over 7 hours a day of parenting. Obviously, they did not count simple supervision or they SAHP and WOHP households would differ by more like 3 or 4 hours during the preschool years. I'd like to know what they did count as parenting. The original study, that resulted in people getting up in arms, counted only actual interaction. Talking to kids, changing diapers, playing games, etc. Since we tend to interact in bits and bytes (the average married couple talks only something like 10 minutes a day when you add up all their 20 second conversations), I believe it. I think they had to stretch the definition of parenting but am puzzled how they did that without skewing things in favor of the SAHP. Two things I know they didn't count are simple supervision time and wage earning.
Edited 6/2/2004 6:04 pm ET ET by grimalkinskeeper
Should real estate agents expect all their clients to be in town weekdays? All clients to be able to take off work as much as they must to look at 10-15 houses between the hours of 9a-5p Mon-Fri only to avoid working evenings & weekends? To hold open houses times other than Sat & Sun afternoons? That all showings be OK'd with the sellers of the homes to only be M-F 9 to 5?
FTR, while we travel abroad often but I can understand not picking up the entire family to move to a far away place. My dh would see that as unfair (as he just sat here and commented to me directly when I asked him his opinion) and I would not do it if the shoe was on the other foot.
Mondo
We are not talking about watching her play as in "supervision". We are talking "interacting with her for the entire time".
Pages